


The Reason for the Season

by Vulgarweed



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Background Adam/Pepper, Background Newt/Anathema, Bentley Smut, Fluff, Holiday Shenanigans, M/M, Smut, roleplay of a sort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-05
Updated: 2016-01-05
Packaged: 2018-05-11 22:21:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5643958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vulgarweed/pseuds/Vulgarweed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adam and Pepper, now married with children of their own, worry that their kids might be losing some of the magic of the season. Adam calls in a little favour from some old friends - with a nice little bonus that's in it for them. Established relationship A/C, a little fluff, a little comedy, a little Bentley smut.</p><p>Written for AJ Crowlor in the 2015 Good Omens Holiday Exchange</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Reason for the Season

“Why me. Why me. Why me,” Crowley muttered, as the Bentley’s sound system wrapped itself around the fifteenth rendition of “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”

“No, if they don’t bloody know it’s bloody Christmas, it’s because they don’t bloody care,” he ranted under his breath, trying to dissolve the guilt-tripping celebrity chorus into screaming molten goo with the sheer force of his hatred for that terrible song. Nothing happened. The car didn’t even spark into a little bit of fire. He never thought he’d think this, but he dearly missed Queen. 

“Feed the world, feed the world,” the voices chanted, sickly and sweet and cloying, reaching out their foul tendrils of smarmy spiritual energy into the wallets of the world.

Charity wasn’t his department. By nature.

Yet here he was in his holly-festooned Bentley, hundreds of feet above the rooftops and meadows of the good old English countryside, with a heart full of rage and a boot full of presents. His red suit smelled of mothballs, jolly old elf sweat, and last year’s peppermint schnapps; his fake beard itched; and the reindeer who drew his chariot seemed constantly on the verge of turning back into the dead frozen mice they had been just a few days ago when Crowley had bought them from the pet shop for a snack.

For all his mastery of mobile phones, there was one number that could not be deleted from one phone in the world. That would be his own.

The holiday song was now taking on such horrific dimensions that Crowley longed for the old days, when a voice from his old office Down Below could cut into any transmission at random with a new assignment and a sickly sense falling deep into Crowley’s stomach that his performance review was about to come round again for renewal. Which it nearly always was, for Hell is full of Human Resources managers desperate for something to do to look busy.

That hadn’t happened since the Apocalypse that wasn’t, decades ago - now Crowley was free to appreciate pop music and television programs for the complete crap that they were, unadulterated by threats of eternal torment beyond their own endless banality.

No, the entity who liked to call in favors did it the human way, even when what he was asking was decidedly inhuman, and inhumane. The Royal Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Occult Beings would surely have written at the very least a strongly-worded letter, if such an organization existed. Crowley resolved to hack someone soon to make sure it would exist - and not only exist now, appear to have existed for two hundred years. 

Being at Hell’s bidding for 6,000 years had been bad enough, and Crowley probably would have thought it couldn’t be worse to trade it in for owing one particular being lots of good - or bad - turns. But, considering that he also found himself in a certain angel’s debt fairly often, Crowley found himself now in potentially humiliating circumstances at nearly every turn.

That said angel usually shared in the awkwardness did help to mitigate the situation, Crowley found.

Sullenly, he lobbed a package from the Bentley roughly in the direction of a chimney. He’d meant it to bounce off the roof, but of course it sailed in perfectly in a wildly implausible dead-on shot. _Hope they have a fire going,_ Crowley thought. Most of the gifts in his blessedly bottomless sack were just for show anyway. There was really only one house to visit that mattered, it just wouldn’t do to make that obvious.

 _Don’t care where he was born,_ Crowley thought. _He’s gone native. As English as they come._ Despite the intervening years, this little village had never lost its implausible storybook quality. Crowley had thought it might grow and change a bit with its most powerful inhabitant - but then the Antichrist had gone off to uni, and of course in his absence the town wouldn’t dare to dream of changing from his memories. And then he’d come home, and he’d married his childhood sweetheart - the one who’d rearrange your face for you if you called her that in her own earshot - and started having some golden-haired and ginger and freckle-faced urchins of his own, so Tadfield was doomed for at least another decade and change to remain a childhood paradise.

For the most part, Adam had been pretty good about not reminding the whole world that it owed him a favor. Big believer in fair play, that Adam - so much so it almost seemed to come to him naturally, and now, that just shouldn’t be possible.

Adam never asked for special treatment for himself, that just wouldn’t be right.

“I’d never know if I could have done that by myself, as myself, you know? If I got what I wanted because I earned it, or just because . . . I wanted it.”

“Well, you don’t have to wonder,” Crowley had said, because he felt like he should. “You could just, I don’t know, accept it. Let it be. That’s what most humans would do.”

Adam nodded at first - and then shook his head. “Most humans, yeah. But I can’t operate like that. I made a choice. Making that choice once wasn’t enough, I don’t think. I have to keep making it.”

And Crowley hadn’t completely understood at the time, but his remarkable ability to not think about things was starting to crack around the edges, and when he did start to think about it, he realized that he’d know, sooner or later, if Adam ever decided to stop making that particular choice. And that it was very important that he didn’t.

So Crowley could say no to Adam’s little requests. Of course he could. Pressuring people wasn’t Adam’s style. Messing people about was something he disavowed, rejected utterly, had sworn not to do since he was eleven, etcetera, and Crowley knew that perfectly well. It wasn’t like he was coerced in any way.

He just wanted to make sure Adam stayed happy, that’s all. Satisfied enough with the world that he wouldn’t start getting too restless. Surely Adam had to know that at least some beings were suspiciously eager to please him, shouldn’t he? Well, now that he thought about it, Crowley fervently hoped that he didn’t.

Still, Adam said his kids wanted Father Christmas, so Father Christmas they shall have, at least for a few years more. No conjuring from scratch, that would draw too much unwanted attention and take too much effort and probably cause some horrific metaphysical side effect. Someone had to play the part at least halfway convincingly.

“Isn’t Father Christmas supposed to be a little, you know,” Crowley said, shaping an invisible pudgy belly with his hands. “Isn’t there someone else we know who’s a little more, er, suited to the role?”

Adam knew exactly who Crowley was attempting to throw under the bus, and shook his head. “No, no, I’ve already got another little favour I’ve asked of him.”

Crowley took the time to work himself into a good head of rage that Aziraphale hadn’t said word one about this to him - before remembering that he also had no intention of admitting to the angel the petty and degrading chore he was about to take on.

Crowley leaned into the Bentley’s yawing turn as the zombie-mice-turned-fake-reindeer made a less-than-graceful curve towards the revoltingly picturesque little house where Adam and Pepper now lived with their brood - close enough to Jasmine Cottage that Aunt Anathema and Uncle Newt could babysit. It was enough to make Crowley’s fangs hurt.

Through the windows, the light within shone a warm and welcoming gold. Adam sat in a comfy chair drinking something hot from a mug while Pepper played with a Lego spaceship set that might or might not have been meant for one of the kids. Both of them were wearing Christmas jumpers. Anathema and Newt were visiting. Looked like nobody was all that fond of Anathema’s everything-free organic biscuits, and nobody was going to ask Newt to help assemble anything, but they looked glad to be there all the same.

Presumably the kids were in bed now, obediently waiting for Father Christmas to do his thing, but Crowley figured Adam and Pepper ought to know better than to expect obedience of any sort from their spawn.

Still, if he had a job to do, he was going to do a fair job of it or be blessed. He reached in the sack for an especially large present, and winged it with all his might at the chimney.

He realised that they had a fire going in the fireplace at the exact moment the parcel left his hand.

Blessing under his breath, he tried desperately to intercept it, and nearly overreached and fell halfway out of the flying Bentley at the exact same moment he heard an ear-piercing screams from the direction of a child’s bedroom on the other side of the house.

 _Well, that’s not nice,_ Crowley thought, _I mean, I hardly have the proper Father Christmas look but I didn’t think I was that terrible, and presents appearing out of nowhere shouldn’t be anything to scream about when Adam was so insistent on the magic of Christmas rigmarole, what did they expect…?_

 _NOT THAT,_ Crowley thought as the Bentley pulled up sharply as a massive shape emerged over the roof of the cottage and loomed up huge in his windshield.

Hair. Horns. Huge broad chest covered in shaggy black fur, long apelike muscular arms toting something lumpy and squirming and squealing in a sack. A goat-like face with horribly cruel and knowing eyes. It was exactly the sort of demon that Crowley wasn’t, and wouldn’t be if he were paid to do it.

The monster opened its bearded jaws, full of slather and slobber and fiendish yellow fangs. It was going to roar and then maybe bite him, or eat whatever was in that sack. Crowley was going to scream since it seemed expected.

And then the horrible creature reached out for the door handle of the Bentley and said, in a cultured and familiar voice. “Oh, thank - something - you’re here. I was concerned I might have to call a taxi in that condition. Or even try that service the kids are all talking about, except that it sounds so frightfully German.”

Crowley sighed as the monster settled itself as best it could in the passenger seat, and opened up its sack. Several rather bedraggled pigeons shook themselves resentfully before trying to fly in a wobbly fashion. One of them relieved itself on the vintage leather, and Crowley squeaked in horror and tried to disintegrate it.

“Father Christmas wouldn’t,” said the demon primly.

“Well, Krampus would,” Crowley said. “But you’re not very good at staying in character.”

“Adam,” said Aziraphale-as-Krampus, for of course it was none other.

“Wanted his kids to have the magic of Christmas,” Crowley said sourly. “Was it Pepper who wanted the daylights scared out of them?”

“Krampus is fashionable,” Aziraphale said. “I’m told there’s a movie.”

“Of course there is,” Crowley said. “There’s _always_ a movie. Nobody has a proper nightmarish imagination of their own anymore. It’s all CGI, even in their heads.”

“It could be worse, though,” Aziraphale said. Someone help him, Crowley was starting to get used to the new look. And he wasn’t in the least bit trying to sneak a glimpse under the ragged loincloth. “At least _It’s a Wonderful Life_ isn’t all the rage anymore.”

“True,” Crowley said. “Be a bit awkward, explaining to the sprogs why the angel got thrown out of the dodgiest pub in Pottersville.”

“Well, looking like this I doubt they’d have let me in to begin with.”

When Aziraphale laughed in the Krampus shape, it was an unsettling gravelly sound. “Aren’t you going to . . . um . . . ?” Crowley wriggled his fingers. “Change shape.”

“Not until we’re at least halfway back to London,” Aziraphale said. “Mustn’t ruin the, er, illusion.”

“Your hooves are ruining my carpeting,” Crowley said.

“Get us back to London quickly and I’ll make it worth your while,” Aziraphale said, and with the face he was wearing, his suggestive leer actually registered as such. Crowley was wracked with mixed emotions.

“Chateau Lafite?” Crowley asked.

“Well, I was honestly planning fellatio,” Aziraphale said.

And yet, in that moment it was Crowley who choked. ‘Not with those teeth, you’re not.”

“You mean it doesn’t work on you even a little?” Aziraphale said. Crowley’s look nearly silenced him. “Well, I suppose I can understand why it wouldn’t. Fine, I shall lose the teeth.”

“Not literally, I hope,” Crowley said. “I’d hate to see what kind of Tooth Fairy would show up.”

 

****

 

They didn’t quite make it all the way back to London before Aziraphale’s facade began to crumble in the onslaught of holiday cheer from the suburbs and the demonic hum of holiday rage from the M25.

Watching him twitch was disconcerting, but Crowley pulled the Bentley slowly down out of the sky and into a hedgerow on a dark, quiet road, watching the purple glow of London spilling out from the thick overcast as a postcard-perfect, and very atypical, swirl of snow began to fall.

“Happy Christmas, Crowley,” Aziraphale said, looking quite a bit more like himself with less fur and more pudge - less claws and more neatly manicured nails that were beginning to wander up the inseam of Crowley’s trousers (currently in the process of turning from Santa red to his usual matte black).

“Rude,” Crowley said. “Considering.”

“I suppose,” Aziraphale said. “Let me apologise then.”

Crowley found himself backed up against the wall of the Bentley, one hand flexing nervously on the steering wheel, and the other with his hand on Aziraphale’s chest, not the least bit certain if it wanted to hold him at bay or continue on down further, now that Aziraphale had shifted back to his regular form enough that what was under that loincloth was likely to be familiar and not terrifying.

Still. The upholstery. Yes, it was repairable. Yes, it still smelled a bit of smoke and brimstone from the Events of two decades ago despite Adam’s rebuilding it in a way that was unnervingly better than perfect. Crowley was still inclined to be protective.

Crowley was dizzy with it all, the holiday miasma - fairy lights in his eyes and eggnog fumes in his nose, and the music was still “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” except now at least it sounded like Freddie Mercury was singing it, which gave it a certain undeserved dignity.

“Don’t you want to wait til we get home?” Crowley asked. “Got a bed there. Something to drink. It’ll be nice.” (He’d stopped himself just before mentioning the fireplace. Aziraphale had recovered from the trauma of his bookshop fire, more or less, but still hadn’t used the real fireplace since he’d discovered those virtual-Yule-log web sites.)

"No, no waiting," Aziraphale said.

"Right here? Like teenagers?" Crowley's voice came out as a slightly hormonal squeak, an entirely unintentional effect.

"You're talking from watching telly again, Crowley. We never were teenagers."

There was something going on in Aziraphale's face. Something a little more . . . feral than was his usual habit. Something almost predatory. Something that made Crowley feel like he was the last of the maki roll on the plate, and Aziraphale was still hungry enough to fight off all rivals for it.

Bless it, it was working on him after all. Aziraphale still had the horns. They were smaller now, almost hidden in his hair, but they still made a worrisome scraping sound when Crowley put up the Bentley's top (aiming for a little privacy at least even if warmth was out of the question.)

They were going to make their own warmth. Steam up the windows good, if Aziraphale got his way about it. Crowley closed his eyes and thought of summer sunlight and warm rocks to bask on when Aziraphale's mouth found his - soft and gentle at first, just the hint of a sharp tooth promising and threatening tender tissues. Crowley groaned and parted his lips, bringing up his tongue to meet Aziraphale's, which was playing in his mouth like a sleepy otter, rolling and diving.

Aziraphale didn't get like this very often, but when he did, it was his very insistence that was intoxicating to Crowley. It was like being sexual creatures was no effort at all, instead it was keeping his hands off Crowley and his lust in his trousers were the heroic effort - an effort Aziraphale couldn't manage for long, cracking under the strain of his own desire: that, that was what made Crowley want with every fibre of his being to succumb.

They should have known, he thought. They should have seen it coming upon them a long way off: it wasn't going to stop with the wine and the devilled eggs and the houseplants, all those little human indulgences that took them over even as they took them in. It would have to sink all the way in and all the way down until things like this started to happen on a regular basis: a feverish kiss that started with lips and melted over cheeks and jaws and shoulders and throats.  
To hands under clothing, buttons and belts and flies fumbled with in the besotted haste of two beings who've temporarily forgotten they could just make obstructions disappear.

Crowley let his head fall back against the seat cushion as Aziraphale worked his way down, tugging at cloth until Crowley sat bare-arsed on the precious leather with his trousers down below his knees.

Rather liked the feel of it, he had to admit, though not the embarrassing squeaks when he squirmed. And he was doing a great deal of squirming, for Aziraphale had wormed his way awkwardly to the floor between Crowley's legs, muttering horrible, wonderful mortifying things about sacks and packages and presents and coming more than once a year, and oh Someone just stop talking and...

The embarrassing squeaks were coming from Crowley's mouth, not his skin, as Aziraphale took him into his mouth, swallowing deep around him and pulling back slowly, then pushing forward, a delirious wet suction that made Crowley murmur and bless in languages he'd forgotten ever existed. His hands in Aziraphale's hair didn't find any real horns at all, just curls that suggested them, gave him something to hang on to. Aziraphale's soft hands on his hips were firm and gripping but clawless and smooth for all their strength.

Crowley felt wild and free, floating, and yet safe, even as his lower legs reflexively kicked against Aziraphale's chest as he came closer to the brink, and Aziraphale made a bit of a warning sound, though muffled by his throat and lips completely occupied by Crowley's cock.

And when Crowley looked down and took in a good long eyeful of Aziraphale's mouthful, that was it, that was what did it, the joyous embarrassing rapture of it all, and his eyes fell shut again and he shook and shook, coming hard. Shaking and barely able to see at all through the stars in his eyes, he did manage to take in a glimpse of Aziraphale, blurry and radiant with a smile a mile wide and a small streak of white fluid across his chin and collar - and worst of all, grinning at a line of drops on the dark leather.

And as Crowley watched in woozy amazement, Aziraphale bent, and with his pink tongue that looked so much more delicate than it had felt, he slowly, theatrically licked the Bentley's seat clean.

God. Someone's god, anyway. Crowley _felt_ it on his skin. 

That snapped him out of his torpor more quickly than usual, and in a flash he had a trembling, gasping Aziraphale on his back beneath him, sprawled out and dishevelled across the seat. breathlessly Crowley kissed him until all the taste of his own release was gone and there was nothing left but the Aziraphale he knew. He buried his face in the crook of Aziraphale's neck - mostly kissing and licking and murmuring, but with a hint of biting - and felt the press of Aziraphale's hands on his head and his back, pulling and encouraging.

In a flash - literally - he had a handful of Aziraphale's cock - iron and velvet, plump and eager and beautiful (but thankfully very much its normal self, nothing disturbingly seasonal). Crowley found he could barely move his hand, wrapped up as he was in Aziraphale"s legs and squeezed up tight against him, but that hardly mattered, for Aziraphale was letting his own frenzy drive them both. Deep, throaty sounds spilled from his mouth as they moved together, rocking the Bentley in the bushes, and Aziraphale held onto Crowley as if he were drowning.

Crowley so cherished Aziraphale’s desperate, pained little sigh that for once he did not mind the mess, for at least it stayed on their hands and clothes and didn’t quite deign to stain any of the Bentley. Though Crowley had to admit to himself that he might not mind a little reminder of Aziraphale shivering in his arms, calling out his name, nearly whimpering.

Softly they recovered their breath and reclaimed limbs from the awkward angles they’d slithered into, smiling a little bit and laughing. The ruin of Crowley’s shirt was still red and white-trimmed, though it was of a sleeker, more stylish cut. Aziraphale’s demonic loincloth had managed to become a pair of boxers with tartan candy-canes.

“Ssssso…” Crowley managed to say as Aziraphale nuzzled him. “Feeling the magic, are we?”

Aziraphale bit him. Crowley figured he deserved that. “Why don’t you take us home?”

“Gladly,” Crowley said. “I want a proper fire, though. Chestnuts and all that rot. We can use my place.”

“Oh, it’s all right, I don’t mind using my fireplace now,” Aziraphale said. “I’m over it. Adam’s done right by us after all.”

“Who’d have thought?” Crowley muttered as he finally mustered the motivation to zip up his trousers. Starting up the Bentley took a little more energy than that, but Aziraphale’s hand on his knee helped him focus.

The Bentley didn’t fly, but it didn’t need to - the softly falling snow had driven most of the traffic off the roads. Or at least something had, and by now Crowley didn’t even question where the miracles came from, as long as they seemed to be on his side.


End file.
